Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [11]
I went up the few steps to the door and stepped into the mudroom and then into the kitchen. Suddenly, I felt sweaty and achy. My coat was too hot, my feet ached from the damp cold, and I was feeling thoroughly miserable. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep for a thousand years.
My old friend, Richard Millman, who owned a catering company called Contemporary Foods, was waiting. He had promised to deliver sustenance and, true to his word, he was there himself with a couple of his longtime waiters. Immediately, he helped me with my muddy coat, folded it over his arm, and then he hugged me. It was out of character for Richard to be that familiar, even though we knew each other well. We had planned dozens of parties and special events together over the years for one organization or another and had suffered plenty of disasters together. One May years ago, the night before a benefit for the New Jersey Symphony, a storm came up carrying unpredicted, uninvited, and very unwelcome sixty-miles-per-hour winds that blew down the tent we had set up for 480 people. Chairs were broken, sound equipment destroyed, racks and racks of glasses smashed to smithereens . . . He just called me and said with all the serenity of the Buddha, “We have a little issue with the tent, Cate. You got a minute?”
Richard was always the consummate pro, completely calm and collected. But today was not like any other day, and I could sense from the shaky and hesitant sound of his voice that he was feeling unusually emotional. Natural disasters were one thing, death was bad enough, but suicide? Suicide destabilized everyone in ways that are difficult to understand, because for all the survivors, it is often impossible to comprehend why someone would do something so rash, so final, for any reason whatsoever. And was any part of their decision to end their life your fault?
“God, Cate, I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do . . .”
“Thanks, Richard. I’m so glad you’re here. Especially in this terrible weather, I had thought that maybe you wouldn’t be able . . .”
“A blizzard couldn’t stop me from coming.” He shook my son’s hand, sorry, Russ, and then took my daughter’s hand in his and when he looked at her wretched face, he added, “Oh, Sara, I’m so sorry.” This was a man who clearly knew heartbreak, something about him that I had never before considered. I wondered what had happened in his life and then I thought that he might just have been born with empathy. Empathy was often an underrated quality—especially by the kinds of sharks with whom Addison did business. They thought empathy made you soft and soft made you less commercial and less commercial made you a big fat stupid loser with a capital L. Nice.
“Thanks, Mr. Millman,” she said, slipping off her coat with Mark’s help.
“There are a few visitors in the living room,” Richard said and quickly gathered all our wet coats. He then excused himself to hang them up somewhere to dry.
“He’s such a sweetheart,” Patti said. “Come on, Mark.”
Patti and Mark went in to see who was there.
“Oh, Mrs. Cooper! I’m feeling so terrible. I can’t imagine how you’re coping with all this. Are you all right? Can I make you a cup of tea?”
It was Albertina, my housekeeper/friend/confidante/savior of the last five years. To my surprise, she was wearing a dark, wine-colored, wool knitted dress, heels, and makeup, instead of her usual gray cotton shirtwaist